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If Men Were Angels: A Novel
Reporter Cliff O'Connell finds himself caught between personal and political passions when his research into darkhorse presidential candidate Thomas Crane reveals a terrible secret that should have remained buried forever. A first novel. Tour.
311 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1997
2 people are currently reading
28 people want to read
About the author
Reed Karaim
10 books26 followersReed Karaim is the author of The Winter in Anna and If Men Were Angels, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. He lives in Tucson, Arizona, with his wife and daughter.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 18, 2023
Catching Up…
Secrets and lies. Politicians. Journalists. What you know. What you share. Who you tell.
In the end…
Who does it affect?
And…
Does it matter?
The author begins with a quote from James Madison…
“What is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
How does this quote play out through the story?
Thomas Crane, seems to be an average, likable Senator.
And…
He is a dark-horse underdog presidential candidate who seems to be the answer to the hopes of the American voters.
However…
To the journalist…
Is he too-good-to-be-true?
And…
When the journalist finds what he finds…
Should he release it for everyone to read?
Compelling. Near-political thriller. With interesting page-turning consequences.
Secrets and lies. Politicians. Journalists. What you know. What you share. Who you tell.
In the end…
Who does it affect?
And…
Does it matter?
The author begins with a quote from James Madison…
“What is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
How does this quote play out through the story?
Thomas Crane, seems to be an average, likable Senator.
And…
He is a dark-horse underdog presidential candidate who seems to be the answer to the hopes of the American voters.
However…
To the journalist…
Is he too-good-to-be-true?
And…
When the journalist finds what he finds…
Should he release it for everyone to read?
Compelling. Near-political thriller. With interesting page-turning consequences.
November 29, 2010
great writing. interesting insight into presidential campaign coverage
November 20, 2017
Spoiler alert.
This book is reminiscent of All the King’s Men in some ways. And it ends the same way – with the candidate getting killed. Ok, that’s not quite the end.
There are differences too. For one thing, this one is set in what I assume to be the recent past, although the author may have envisioned it as the near future when it was written. All the King’s Men was written many years ago, and it takes place in what was perhaps at that time the recent past or near future but is now long ago. And in this case, the protagonist is a reporter rather than a political staffer.
Our reporter, Cliff O’Connell has been assigned to cover the candidacy of Thomas Hart Crane, originally thought to be a long-shot, for President. Up to this point, Cliff has had a rather lackluster career as a reporter, but when Crane’s candidacy takes off, he finds his career on the upswing too.
There is a love interest too. Cliff’s former lover, Robin, works for the Crane campaign, and she seems to be finding it the job she has always wanted. Cliff and Robin reconnect big time, and this somehow skews events, although I am not sure exactly what the connection is. I kept expecting it would turn out that Robin also had a relationship with Crane, but that didn’t happen – never even came close.
What did happen, however, was that early in the campaign Robin, in her enthusiasm, mentions something about how Crane never even hesitates about anything. Cliff can’t believe that and apparently doesn’t want to just accept it as over-enthusiastic babbling on Robin’s part, so he keeps worrying the point, questioning the people in Crane’s hometown to see if he was ever hesitant about anything related to his political career. It turns out that he came back three times, ostensibly to check with the people who were his earliest sponsors.
Apparently suspecting it will turn out that Crane is somehow beholden to one of his rich sponsors in some way that will compromise his candidacy, Cliff keeps picking at the matter. Eventually, he learns that Crane has a secret love-child. So secret that he has never even met her himself.
After talking to the girl’s mother, Cliff has almost convinced himself that he won’t do anything with the information. No crime has been committed. Crane has been paying child support and has kept the affair secret at the request of the mother. But when he returns to the campaign, Robin meets him and personally begs him not to break the story. For some reason this sets Cliff off and, convinced that “the American people need to know the truth,” he informs his bosses at his paper, and the story is, naturally published.
This does terrible things to the Crane campaign. Given some of the disastrous revelations of the past twenty or thirty years of real life politics-as-usual, it is difficult to believe the amount of hate launched at this man (ok, maybe not that difficult) who, frankly seems to be a basically good-hearted sort. If this was the worst thing he had ever done, it is entirely possible he might have made a good President.
I found this book on Scribd.
This book is reminiscent of All the King’s Men in some ways. And it ends the same way – with the candidate getting killed. Ok, that’s not quite the end.
There are differences too. For one thing, this one is set in what I assume to be the recent past, although the author may have envisioned it as the near future when it was written. All the King’s Men was written many years ago, and it takes place in what was perhaps at that time the recent past or near future but is now long ago. And in this case, the protagonist is a reporter rather than a political staffer.
Our reporter, Cliff O’Connell has been assigned to cover the candidacy of Thomas Hart Crane, originally thought to be a long-shot, for President. Up to this point, Cliff has had a rather lackluster career as a reporter, but when Crane’s candidacy takes off, he finds his career on the upswing too.
There is a love interest too. Cliff’s former lover, Robin, works for the Crane campaign, and she seems to be finding it the job she has always wanted. Cliff and Robin reconnect big time, and this somehow skews events, although I am not sure exactly what the connection is. I kept expecting it would turn out that Robin also had a relationship with Crane, but that didn’t happen – never even came close.
What did happen, however, was that early in the campaign Robin, in her enthusiasm, mentions something about how Crane never even hesitates about anything. Cliff can’t believe that and apparently doesn’t want to just accept it as over-enthusiastic babbling on Robin’s part, so he keeps worrying the point, questioning the people in Crane’s hometown to see if he was ever hesitant about anything related to his political career. It turns out that he came back three times, ostensibly to check with the people who were his earliest sponsors.
Apparently suspecting it will turn out that Crane is somehow beholden to one of his rich sponsors in some way that will compromise his candidacy, Cliff keeps picking at the matter. Eventually, he learns that Crane has a secret love-child. So secret that he has never even met her himself.
After talking to the girl’s mother, Cliff has almost convinced himself that he won’t do anything with the information. No crime has been committed. Crane has been paying child support and has kept the affair secret at the request of the mother. But when he returns to the campaign, Robin meets him and personally begs him not to break the story. For some reason this sets Cliff off and, convinced that “the American people need to know the truth,” he informs his bosses at his paper, and the story is, naturally published.
This does terrible things to the Crane campaign. Given some of the disastrous revelations of the past twenty or thirty years of real life politics-as-usual, it is difficult to believe the amount of hate launched at this man (ok, maybe not that difficult) who, frankly seems to be a basically good-hearted sort. If this was the worst thing he had ever done, it is entirely possible he might have made a good President.
I found this book on Scribd.
November 22, 2017
Once you find the cadence of the book, it is easy to just relax and read the story. I didn’t have a problem with the back and forth in time writing but I certainly have with other books I’ve read.
I really like this author and the way he gives us the story, bit by bit. His characters feel like real people, tired and worn out by being on the campaign road for weeks or months at a stretch. His writing has compassion and clarity. (You will love his second novel)
I really got involved with Cliff and his determination to “get the story”. There is a moral question here at stake as well. A politician is supposed to be white as snow, perfect, no surprises, no past, absolutely no skeletons in the closet... who is like that? NO ONE. So, is it our right to know, if it doesn’t interfere with the running of the country? That’s the big question.
I liked Tom Crane. He would have been a good president.
I really like this author and the way he gives us the story, bit by bit. His characters feel like real people, tired and worn out by being on the campaign road for weeks or months at a stretch. His writing has compassion and clarity. (You will love his second novel)
I really got involved with Cliff and his determination to “get the story”. There is a moral question here at stake as well. A politician is supposed to be white as snow, perfect, no surprises, no past, absolutely no skeletons in the closet... who is like that? NO ONE. So, is it our right to know, if it doesn’t interfere with the running of the country? That’s the big question.
I liked Tom Crane. He would have been a good president.
April 11, 2022
A captivating story that is well read by James Daniels.
April 17, 2018
Excellent political novel. The author is a journalist who covered campaigns, including Bill Clinton's and that evidently inspired the novel. The politician in the novel is a small town boy-made-good who is running for president in a grass roots approach similar to Jimmy Carter's. The fictional journalist discovers a secret in his past, which is really pretty inconsequential to the election and reveals it. Revealing it messes up several people's lives. The journalist thought it was justified because it revealed something about the man's character, but had he probed deeper, he would have discovered that it revealed something fine in the man's character.
January 19, 2016
The first half of If Men were Angels moved slowly for me. I had trouble getting into the story, possibly because of the frequent jumps back and forward in time. I had trouble sympathizing with the characters as well. The climax was given away at the beginning, so the second half of the book was discovering why the main character made his choice. Actually, the main reason was also alluded to at the beginning of the book. On the whole, I was left very grateful that I'm not a reporter covering a political campaign, however vibrant that campaign may be.
August 20, 2010
A presidential candidate seems too good to be true and a reporter decides to dig into the past. Of course there is a secret...will it make a difference? This story is told in both present and past tense from the reporter's perspective. A good book for a book club because there is so much to discuss about choices and right or wrong.
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June 12, 2013Great political drama, will help you through your House of Cards withdrawal until Season 2 come out!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews